Black Women Are Worth 10K

I came across this story at The Root but it was originally posted at Aunt Jemima’s Revenge. Chiman Rai So hated blacks that he hired a hit man to kill his black daughter-in law, Sparkle. The case was labeled an honor killing. Eight years ago Rajeeve came home to find his daughter unhurt, and his wife brutally murdered. When asked by police during the investigation of his wifes death about his parents, he referred to them as “a little racist”. This from a man that told his wife, and her family that his parents were dead, rather than deal with their racism.

Eight years later the prosecutor is seeking the death penalty, and a little girl is growing up without both of her parents. Yes I said both, you see since the death of his wife, Rajeeve has remarried an Indian woman, and has not bothered to see his daughter. It seems that Sparkle’s death taught him which bodies matter in this society.

When I first read this story, I must admit to openly weeping, not only for the light that was so sadly doused, but for the child that is now denied the birthright of her mothers love. Once I moved past the sadness, rage settled upon me, like fog rolling across a series of hills. A rage so deep that it leaves me nearly inarticulate. As I have said many times before, black women occupy the bottom of the racial and gender hierarchy in the western world. That we continue to pay for this positioning with our very lives, is evidence that this so-called post racial society is non existent. What was this young mothers crime, but existing as black and female in this world?

We claim to believe in equality, and to value people equally, but daily black women are assaulted, and murdered. Our deaths and our rapes go unrecognized by traditional media. It seems that we are only visible when we are committing a crime, and not when a crime is committed against us. We are silenced in feminist circles, and minimized in the civil rights struggle. Where is a WOC to receive validation of her worth? We must turn to each other as shelter from a world that treats our bodies akin to disposable refuse. Sit silently no longer my sisters because very few will truly speak on our behalf.

I often wonder behind the PC speech where is the anger at our treatment. It seems it is fashionable to pay lip service these days to the oppressed but to articulate from a position of rage is a rare phenomenon. Passion and outrage are saved for the more legitimate causes, while daily the war against WOC is raged and the bodies are buried, unnoticed, unvalued, and forgotten. How many feminists have even bothered to ask the question why WOC are not featured when they are missing, or why there is no discussion when pregnant black mothers are killed? It does not diminish you as a woman to admit that WOC hurt too. How many men will continually privilege race over gender and in the process treat us, and our concerns as though they were invisible? I cannot sit in peace and watch as my sisters are made to pay the price for being black and female in our racist, and patriarchal society. I am an angry black woman and my rage is justified.